thanks

I tried something a bit more freeform for this one, based off a monolinear script with some slight variations in the stroke width. What I really wanted to do with this one was use an arched grid in order to emphasize the looseness of the style. It was a nice challenge. There are still some weight issues I think that need some working out, so that will be something I revisit.

March 12, 2014 ---------

I got sidelined with a cold for a few days there but I was feeling better and decided to get back into it. I wanted to delve into the capital letters a bit today because I am pretty hesitant about it. The scripts feel a bit more natural to me so getting into this part of the class is a bit intimidating. I started simple with a Art Deco style similar to what Spencer demonstrated in his video.

This was a quick study overall and will most likely be revisited or redone to finesse some of the curves.

March 6, 2014 ---------

I wanted to mess around with the upright script a bit today considering I strayed away from it yesterday. I drew the basic script then started to play with different brushes and came up with the example below. I used a contoured stroke that was tapered at either end. The immediate results after applying were quite nice but it definitely needed some cleanup. There were a lot of areas where the stroke weight was unnecessarily think or thin. The script on the top is this somewhat cleaned up version, while the script below that is the basic untweaked version that I drew originally. I had a lot of fun with these so I'll definitely be revisiting them in order to adjust the stroke widths, etc.

March 5, 2014 ---------

I somewhat just stumbled upon this one while messing around. I thought the word "merci" would look good in an upright script similar to the one showed in Spencer's script styles video. It had a interesting "Euro" look to it so it seemed appropriate. However, it somehow evolved into what you see below. I'm pretty happy with the casual bounce it has, and the forms still seem to have a French quality to me. The serifs seem a bit long to me now that I'm looking at it, so I'll probably revisit them.

March 4, 2014 ---------

Tried using the monolinear script as a basis for a more brushed look. This was probably the most difficult style so far because you really have to think about how this would look if it was written with a brush pen on paper. Keeping the brush angle consistent was a challenge. If there is too much variation there then the style is not convincing. I think it came out pretty nice for a first try.

March 2, 2014 ---------

Prior to joining the class, I had been working on some initial designs for a series of Thank You cards. I've dabbled a little bit in hand-drawn lettering before but when I would try and translate to Illustrator, it would always feel clumsy and unrefined.

I decided to try building some letterforms in Illustrator without using a pencil sketch as a foundation in order to do some experimentation and see what I could come up with. The picture below is something I made about a month back, which I was never really happy with. For some reason it didn't cross my mind to use any type of reference so it was a long and annoying process. I didn't build this in the best way either so doing any adjustments to the letters would be a real pain.

I do like some of the embellishments in the letters but overall I am not into it. It's a style that I'd like to maybe refine a bit later in the project.

So anyway, I'm running with this idea of "Thanks" and hoping to bend the rules a little bit and do some variations on that - Thank You, Thanx, Thx - just to challenge myself a bit more with the different letterforms. I was also considering doing some other languages, but I wasn't sure if that was too far outside of the project parameters.

Here is one of my initial attempts using some of the methods taught in class:

I am really taking my time here in order to get a good understanding of the forms and finessing the curves. Pretty happy for how this came out for a first attempt. The flourish is a bit of an arbitrary shape because I didn't use a reference for that, but it was fun to mess around with.

Here's a more monolinear style script that I've been doing as well:I used the stroke width tool in order to fine-tune some parts and taper the terminals. I think I like this one a bit more than the traditional script.

From here I'm going to play around with some of the capital script letterforms and try my hand at a few more script styles before venturing into the roman letter / embellishments section.